Modern displays, particularly those used in aircraft for flight planning and monitoring, are capable of displaying a considerable amount of information such as flight planning information and terrain information The terrain information consists of situational awareness (SA) terrain and terrain cautions and warnings that, among other things, may indicate where the aircraft may potentially impact terrain. The flight planning information consists of flight path information, altitude information and other information useful to a pilot or crewmember in following and anticipating the path and altitude of the aircraft over the ground.
Weather information can also be delivered to a weather display in the cockpit. The weather display can be dedicated to this function or may be used for several other operations as set forth above. When weather data is graphically displayed in an aircraft cockpit, the weather data requires concentrated attention by the aircrew to assess potential weather threats. Weather data (particularly from a ground or satellite based source rather than weather radar), is periodically refreshed at intervals ranging from a few minutes to several hours, depending on the region and data set. Further, weather displays are typically colorful, bright, and changing to help the crew distinguish between light and severe weather. When such bright and colorful weather displays are in a peripheral view (relative to the main flight instrumentation), it can be distracting to the pilot and crew.
It would be useful, therefore, to provide a weather display system that does not require continuous monitoring by a pilot or crew in order to detect potential threats of bad weather and which avoids crew distractions when weather is not severe.
When the weather display is a part of an integrated flight display system operating in a shared mode with other flight and navigation functions, it would be useful to provide a mechanism for alerting the crew to specified weather conditions even though the display is being used in other modes.